In the present political climate, reform or elimination
of the certificate of need program is a distinct possibility.
At the national level, the deregulatory movement has led
to attacks on the program by officials in the Reagan administration,
who claim it is ineffective in containing capital
spending and impedes competition in the industry.
In the 1980-81 session of the Illinois General Assembly,
legislation was introduced that would have abolished the
program. Although unsuccessful, the proposed bill reflects
the controversy surrounding the program within
the state. As the debate continues, at both the national
and state level, it is a good time to examine the experience
of the Illinois program. This article does that by
analyzing the decisions made by the certificate of need
program on hospital proposals from 1975 through 1979
and by examining some evidence of the program's impact.
In the first section, we present an overall summary
of the program's approval rate in terms of the number and
percent of projects approved, withdrawn, denied, and
modified; in the next section, we describe the types of
projects which the program favors; and in the final section,
we discuss some evidence of the program's impact
on hospital bed supplies. The complex process by which
CON decisions are reached in the state is not addressed
in this paper so that we may focus on the results of the
process and its possible impacts.

Issue Date:

1982-01

Publisher:

Institute of Government and Public Affairs. University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.